


I've Been Here Before

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Comment Fic 2017 [57]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-11 03:02:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11705442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: Written for the comment_fic prompt: "any, any, knowing the future and defying it."Ten-year-old Johnny Sheppard gets a visit from his future self, twenty-odd-years from tonight. He has a favor to ask.





	I've Been Here Before

**Author's Note:**

> This is a slashed-up story version of Dessa's Mineshaft II. Check the song out - it's beautiful.
> 
> Written for the What If AU Challenge #5 - Time Travel.

“I was hoping we could trade,” the man said.

Johnny parted the crumpled, stained newspaper and stared down at the mess his future self had brought him. It took him a moment, but he recognized it as a heart. A human heart. It was badly-damaged, freezer-burned (frostbitten, his mother would say) in parts. He’d learned about hearts in science class, and he turned it over with careful hands. One day, this heart would be his. It was old, tattered and battle-scarred, not from bad eating or dangerous wounds, but from _feeling._ Johnny traced the veins and scar tissue. He could see the blood, black as pitch. He parted the stubborn flesh where it had already been cut, explored further. The valves were stiff. The heart was mostly intact, had all four chambers, but two were full of ice water - that was probably what the frostbite was from. One was full of salt. The other was full of coal.

“What’s wrong with it?” Johnny peered up at his older self, wary.

John was tall, even taller than Dad and Uncle Mark. He had crazy cool spiky hair - how Johnny’s hair looked unless Mom let it grow out and then gelled it down. John was kinda skinny, like Uncle Mark, but he looked strong. Tough. Was wearing one of those army necklaces, with his name and blood type and stuff. He had a black wristband on his right wrist but no wedding ring or anything.

“It’s standard issue,” John said. He was sitting beside Johnny on the windowsill, had climbed up the metal stairs of the fire escape like he’d done it a thousand times (Johnny had done it at least a hundred times) and sat down. Listened to Johnny playing his guitar, joined in on Ring of Fire, smiled.

It had taken Johnny a moment to recognize John for who he was.

“But forgiveness is huge and this heart - it has no more room left. It’s just - eager and ready and willing to find fault.” John prodded the coal ruefully; his fingertip came away dusty-black.

“Why do you need my heart?” Johnny asked. He pressed a fist to his chest, felt his own heartbeat.

“I know this is a huge favor for a kid just turned ten,” John said, “but you’re the best that I’ve been so far and I’m too big to forgive him and I promise you solemn I’ll be back tomorrow -”

Johnny held up a hand the way Mom did when she wanted people to be quiet.

It still worked. John shut his mouth. Johnny couldn’t remember ever talking so much. He was surprised his future self did. But maybe he didn’t talk so much either. If it was just the two of them, future John and Johnny, it was like talking to himself.

“Start at the beginning,” Johnny said.

John stared down at the newspaper-wrapped mess of his heart. “Twenty-odd years from tonight the greatest love of your life is going to call during dinner from the home of the girl he’s living with now.”

 _From the home of the girl_ he’s _living with now._ Something in Johnny’s chest slotted into place, made sense. No wonder he felt weird and fluttery when Joey Joslin looked at him sometimes, Joey with his big blue eyes and wavy blond hair.

“He’s not living with us?” Johnny asked.

John stroked a finger down his tattered, battle-scarred heart. “No. But he’ll say - he’ll say the guilt is killing him, he’s wilted in the middle -”

“Wilted?”

 _“She’s_ a botanist.”

Johnny wrinkled his nose. “Okay.”

“He’ll say he knows how bad he acted, knows he can’t have us back, but he can’t be happy when we’re angry.”

“Are we angry?”

“We’re so angry,” John said quietly.

Johnny wondered why. “Then what?”

“He’ll say we stayed so mad, and he heard on the street we moved back in with Dad, and we’re drinking something awful, and that makes him sad.”

 _That_ was the smell coming off of John that Johnny hadn’t quite been able to put his finger on. Gin, like a good Englishman, a good Sheppard (there was a joke in there Johnny only kind of got).

“What next?” Johnny knew it could be a bad idea to know the future, but he wouldn’t be the first to know it or try to change it. Maybe he’d even succeed. If changing the future was a good idea.

“He’ll say it’s good to hear our voice again, and it’s hard to ask, but he’s calling with a question.”

“What question?” Johnny pressed. He just wanted to get to the _point,_ but maybe what his future self needed, more than Johnny’s heart, was someone who would listen and maybe _get it._

“He’ll say he’s been working real hard, he’s trying to make a new start, an honest-to-god fresh beginning, so maybe you could try to finally find it in your heart to forgive him.” John stroked his thumb down the thick, tough flesh of his heart.

Salt and ice water mingled and dripped like tears, blurring the words on the crumpled newspaper.

Johnny stared at the heart. “I don’t think I could find much in here besides what’s already here.”

“That’s why I need your heart,” John said. He reached out, scooped up Johnny’s guitar - his old guitar - and began to play. He was better than Johnny could imagine being, hands confident on the strings, fingers long enough to hit those bar chords without even trying.

“How’d you find me?” Johnny asked.

“I remember sitting up here on the windowsill and singing, and I figured I’d find the ghost of you here.”

Johnny didn’t think he was a ghost. He didn’t feel like one.

John smiled at him, nudged him. “And here you are, with your gap-toothed grin.”

“I’ve almost got all my grown-up teeth,” Johnny protested.

John laughed, and Johnny had the sense that John hadn’t laughed like that in a long time.

“Not for another couple years yet, I’m sorry to say.” John ruffled Johnny’s hair, and that was familiar, was comforting.

Johnny sighed. “Fine.”

John kept playing, and Johnny stared down at his future self’s heart.

John said, without looking at his younger self, “I only need yours this evening so I can call an old friend and I can tell him that we’re finally even.”

 _Even_ didn’t really sound like _I forgive you._

But Johnny said, “Okay.” And he opened himself up, scooped out his own heart. It was smaller than John’s but definitely healthier-looking. Johnny held it out, and John set the guitar aside before he accepted it carefully, cradled it in his hands for a long time. Looked at it. And finally he unbuttoned his shirt and put the heart in, closed his eyes while it settled - he’d recognize everything he saw in it - and then he stood up.

“Tomorrow,” he said, and climbed back down the fire escape stairs the way Johnny would a hundred hundred times more.

Johnny took a deep breath, then picked up John’s damaged heart and set it into the hollow in his chest, and -

_Ow._

Mom dying. Dad screaming. John running away. To Stanford. The Air Force. Nancy. Divorce. Mitch. Dex. Holland. War. Death. Destruction. Ice. Ice cold. Antarctica. Atlantis. Rodney! Elizabeth. Sumner. Wraith. Teyla. Aiden. Gall. Abrams. Grodin. Markham. Stackhouse. Ronon. Katie. Chaya. Teer. Mara. Zelenka. Lorne. Ascension. Hive ships. Puddle jumpers. The gate. The Chair. Rodney. Rodney. Meredith Rodney. _Rodney._

I love you. I hate you. I blame you. I fight for you. I die for you. I kill for you. I give up on you. I believe in you. I protect you. I love you. I love you. I hate you. I’m angry at you.

Johnny saw it all - the moment he fell in love in love for the first time, for the last time, when he fell out of love.

He felt it all - the elation of flying for the first time, his awe at the Stargate, and his burning resentment of what Rodney had done, running away to Katie when he couldn’t handle the weight of John’s _don’t ask don’t tell._

It was beautiful and hideous and terrifying. No wonder John had needed to borrow Johnny’s heart, to even meet Rodney halfway to an apology.

But Johnny would fall asleep with this heart, and dream, and learn, and remember, and the next morning he’d get his own heart back.

And twenty-odd years from tonight, he’d be standing in his quarters on Atlantis, having words with Rodney, and he’d hear them, the echo of a memory, cutting derision and pain turned into verbal blades and slicing through John’s already-wounded, already-scarred heart.

The deja-vu would be almost overwhelming.

_I've been here before._

_I already know where it goes._

_You chose this, you know it’s supposed to be over._

“We’re over, John,” Rodney would say.

And in defiance of all John Sheppard had carried for twenty-odd years, he’d say, “No.”

And then he’d turn in his silver oak leaves and his wings and get to stay on Atlantis anyway, because they needed him, and Rodney was there.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Brumeier for her speedy beta and encouragement on my foray into a new genre. This wasn't the time travel story I'd intended to write for this challenge, but it had to be written.


End file.
